Matchmaking Changes [1-16-2013]

In the latest game update, we rolled out a second beta test of a new matchmaking change that is live in all territories. This change will increase your average queue time by about 30 seconds, but we hope the benefits are worthwhile.

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The matchmaker will now take into account the Number of Wins a player has in every matchmade queue (Normal SR, Normal TT, Ranked Solo/Duo, etc).

This means that for the first few minutes, the matchmaker will attempt to find teammates and opponents that have a relatively similar Number of Wins as you in addition to trying to find teammates and opponents that also have a similar skill rating. However, this does not mean it's impossible to get matched into a game with a large difference in Number of Wins--it's just more rare.

We need your help! Please give us feedback on the changes.

PS - RiotKiddington was the dev that did most of the work.

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UPDATE :::

I'm crunching the data these days and finding some interesting things. I think for the sake of transparency, I'm just going to reveal the numbers I'm seeing.

One, the average game has a much closer win differential than before, so we know the feature is at least doing what it's supposed to. For example, we're seeing ~5% more games in Normal SR where teams only have a 0-49 number of wins difference between teams. In Ranked SR we're seeing ~30% more games with only a 0-49 number of wins difference between teams.

Two, we're seeing that the average game has a similar Elo differential than before, but I think this data point is misleading and we need to deep dive this a bit more. For example, we're seeing lower numbers of games with 20-30 Elo differences between teams which is an unintended effect.

Three, if we define a lopsided game as games with a huge KDA differential or something like 10,000 gold difference, we're not seeing more or less of these games post-patch. It might just be that players who are getting the lopsided matches come and post about it, and the players who are getting fair matches don't.

Taking all three points into account, we believe the Number of Wins feature is a net positive and don't believe it's creating more lopsided games than before. However, we have a few improvements we want to make to the feature--we will most likely increase the weighting for skill rating (Elo) so that skill rating is always much higher priority than number of wins. This will fix Issue #2 I pointed out above, while retaining some of the benefits of adding Number of Wins to the matchmaker.

That would explain why it felt like it was taking longer to find games.

Have you guys ever found any kind of data suggesting that teams with more wins are more likely to win? Especially in certain queues?

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Yes, the main reason we are testing this feature is because of data suggesting that Number of Wins makes a meaningful difference especially when it's players with lower number of wins. For example, a player with 10 wins versus a player with 100 wins is a meaningful difference; however, a player with 1000 wins versus a player with 5000 wins isn't that different.

It might work in more popular queues like summoners rift, but it needs to be dynamically adjusted based on queue popularity at the time, so that there aren't super long queues at off times, or in unpopular queues like dominion draft.

I don't mind waiting slightly longer for a SR game to get a much more evenly matched game, but when the queues get excessive it really isn't worth it IMO.

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We'll be taking a look at Dominion during these tests. If it turns out that the queue time increases are not worth the benefit, we can turn it off in Dominion.

I have three times the amount of wins of the two people i queue up with the most and am about four hundred behind someone else i queue up with often. How will it balance out when all four of us are playing together?

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Currently, we simply search for team compositions that average a similar number of wins to face you.

So far, all I've noticed is like 1-2 minute longer queue times, every time. Still getting lots of players with several hundred wins over me. Will have to play more and see if this is really working.

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It really come down to if the system can find people within your elo range and also within your # of win range. if after a time limit the system can't find a perfect match, it will have no choice but to increase the search range. That's why you are still getting some people with hundreds of wins over you.

Lyte and I want to know is this, the longer the queue time the better "match result" you will get, but it comes with a cost (of time). Is the current 30 seconds increase in queue time worth the benefit of matchmaking with additional consideration of # of wins?

Earlier, 2 friends and I queue'd to play a game of normal 3's. My friend is not yet level 30 (don't accuse of us smurfiing since we are entirely pre-made!), and when the game began to load - we were against 3 players all of gold Elo or higher, as well as one being a player on the #1 rated 3v3's team. This seems like a possible problem with the matchmaking system - I don't see how we could have had such a spike in our match making search. Often we see teams that have relatively clueless players, or players that are also not level 30. What caused this to happen? I hope it was not a glitch or something in the system.

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That's a different problem, mostly has to do with premades. I will discuss with Lyte when the time comes.

Since this patch, a my friend and I have been experiencing ridiculously long queue times (3+ minutes per game). We play Normal Draft, and have never experienced queue times this long. Recently we've had queue's hit upwards of 20 minutes. This change has made it so much more time consuming to get into a game, and it's really becoming a nuisance. Are there any plans to bring down this extra queue time? It's getting a tad ridiculous.

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This should not be related to matchmaking changes of this change. It was the server instability after patch that caused the issue you experienced. Sorry for your inconvenience.